This project is a libpurple plugin that wraps deltachat-core, allowing a number of existing desktop and mobile clients to send and receive IMs over SMTP+IMAP. It may be useful for Linux-based mobile devices, for GUI desktop usage without an Electron dependency, or console desktop usage.

Current status is probably best described as "skunkworks", although connecting to an account and sending / receiving text messages should work reliably. You can view specific progress on the issue board.

Build

There are some licensing issues at present, so you shouldn't build this plugin.

deltachat-core vendors openssl, unconditionally links it, and is MPL-licensed.

purple-plugin-delta is GPLv3 without the OpenSSL exemption

libpurple itself is GPLv2 without the OpenSSL exemption.

deltachat-core-rust may make OpenSSL optional, so linking against that version would be fine.

Linking against a patched / changed deltachat-core that disregards vendored OpenSSL and uses GnuTLS instead would also be fine.

There's no point to purple-plugin-delta adding the OpenSSL exemption because libpurple lacks it, and in any event, it will be unnecessary with the next major version of OpenSSL. So, time should resolve this for us one way or another.

Use

The easiest way to use this is to copy the libdelta.so file into ~/.purple/plugins. When running pidgin, you'll now have the option to add a "Delta Chat" account.

If it doesn't show up, chances are pidgin can't find the various shared libraries the .so depends on. You can run ldd ~/.purple/plugins/libdelta.so to confirm. I'll document fixing this after the build and install system is settled.

At present, the "Username" and "Password" account fields correspond to email address and password, respectively. Many important settings also show up on the "Advanced" tab - if left blank, the plugin will attempt to automatically detect the correct values, but you may need to fill some of them in manually to get the connection to work.

Run pidgin with --debug to see interesting output.